Goode Grief: Holy Gaggle of People, Batman

Against my better judgment, Monkey and I headed out to the Children's Museum today. I have been wanting to take her to see the Barbie Exhibit and today worked out best for our schedule.

Problem is that today was "Free Admission" day.

Sure --sounds all warm and fuzzy... well it was warm. Scratch that-- it was hot. It was hot and packed.

Packed was an understatement.

Turns out this banner was not an advertisement for the Barbie Exhibit...

But rather a visual example of how they expected you to have to stand while pretending like you got to see the Barbie Exhibit.

I knew today would be busy, but I had no idea it would have been the equivalent to walmart announcing they were giving away free groceries...

Holy.

Cow.

I should have known when it took me 1/2 hr to find a parking space. And, once I found a spot I had to go all territorial on the other cars cause folks were seriously gonna take it from me. It was NUTS.

After fighting a good fight to get there... Miss Add, Gilbert and I were a little hopeful that parking was going to be our major challenge of the day.

But then we discovered that there were lines on the ramp to get from level to level.

Long lines that barely moved and took about 45 minutes to change levels...

to then... you guessed it... stand in more lines to try to pretend to do whatever you were trying to do. I mean-- I believe in make believe but sheesh!

There were of course those handful of parents who thought their time was more precious than the rest of us... that they had some sort of reason better than the hundreds of other folks that should entitle them to skip line.

I had news for them... I had a two year old who needed to go potty... and we waited.

We did manage to find a few holes here and there that didn't have shoulder to shoulder people. 

Add got to play with the trains for a little while and she absolutely loved it.

She loved looking at all the train exhibits...

and for this shot she only had to push her way through 10 kids.

After the trains we then stood in line to get up to level two. By the time we got there, Gilbert was tired so we sat for a brief moment to get some rest.

Standing in line for hours on end were made possible by this little guy...

Ya know that moment when packing the toddler bag... the moment of should I pack this or that? This will make it heavier. That won't be needed, will it? ...

Addie's Happy Meal Alvin Chipmunk Toy made the cut... for whatever reason (Divine intervention, maybe?) And THANK HEAVENS it did. She played with Alvin most of the day... while waiting in lines.

Seriously. We could have stayed home with Alvin and had more fun.

Once we made it to Level 2, we discovered Barbie had a whole other long line so we popped in to see some of the dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs turned out to be the hit of the trip.

RAHHHHHEEEERRR!

Thanks Add, I wanted to say that all day--especially to the self-important line skipping parents... rahhheeerrr!

At this point I decided to go ahead and give Barbie a shot. We had waited all that time afterall.

After waiting we finally got up there.

And we got to see a few things.

There were a handful of neat displays at the beginning...

Nostalgia hit.  I had this Barbie van as a kid.

And this pool.... Ahhh Barbie. It feels like we waited a whole day to see you.

Wait, we did.

Once we got through the entry displays, my Mama Bear instincts kicked in.

Some how the very nice librarian-like museum workers turned bouncers didn't give me comfort in dealing with the Beatle-mania- like crowd control.


There was no room to move around and I began to become fearful that if someone yelled fire we were all goners.

That, and I feared if Add happened to get away from me there would be little hope of finding her.

So we left.

As we were leaving they finally began preventing folks from coming in. I ran into a lady in the parking lot and she asked if it was true they weren't letting people in. I told her it didn't matter. That it wasn't worth it. (She didn't listen to me though...lol)

So this experience should have me cursing the very name of the museum, right?

Nope.

I can't wait to take Add back and gladly pay my admission fee so we can enjoy it all the way it was suppose to be enjoyed.

I'm a sucker. I know.